


Into Eternity

by Siggy1998



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prison, Character Death, F/M, Happy Ending, Happy Ending?, Original Character Death(s), Romance, Sad Ending, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6050566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siggy1998/pseuds/Siggy1998
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was cold and distant and some might have called her cruel. I agreed.</p><p>Levi Ackerman is a teacher at Rose Correctional Academy, something of a penitentiary for troubled or overly aggressive teens. He is drawn in by one of the students, a girl known simply as Reaper, who doesn't seem to fit the typical penitentiary student mold. 6400 words of Levi realizing that he loves her and letting her go.</p><p>TW for suicide</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into Eternity

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [i need just one night alone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166409) by [albion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/albion/pseuds/albion). 



            She was cold and distant and some might have even called her unhealthily aggressive. I wouldn’t have gone so far. From her records I saw that her foster parents (all twelve of them, as she had been bounced through a total of six households in the course of a single year) complained that when their other foster children hit her she would hit back far harder, get far angrier, hurl far meaner words, but she never did so unprovoked. Her case worker, upon the girl’s entry into Rose Correctional Academy, had merely told me that she was, more often than not, detached and blank unless asked a direct question. For the most part she was quiet and reserved, very rarely sparing anything but the window, her papers, or the board so much as a glance.

            Her silence often got her in trouble. Not with the Rose administration or faculty, but with other students. Being a correctional facility, Rose was home to a whole host of kids, some more aggressive than others. The most aggressive of them could be set off by just about anything, and ignoring them was a surefire way to piss them off. I remembered one time in particular when she had accidentally bumped into Ciandra, a tall girl with blonde hair and a raging temper, in the hallway. Ciandra had immediately grabbed her by the hair and asked her if she was looking for a fight. She hadn’t responded, and the blonde girl snarled.

            “You’ll pay for this, you little bitch of a Grim Reaper,” she said harshly, referring to the girl’s tendency to wear all black all the time. She grabbed her by the hair and flung her into the lockers while a ring of other students began chanting about a fight.

            I had remembered her record, about how she always hit back harder, and I immediately shoved my way through the crowd, more concerned for Ciandra than for the girl she was attacking. I was short, so it took me a while, and I was sure that that wasted time would result in Ciandra’s lifeless body lying bloodied on the tile floor. By the time I finally broke into the middle of the ring, a security guard beside me, there had been loud bangs of bodies hitting the lockers or the floor, thuds of fists connecting with skin.

            I was surprised at what I saw. Ciandra was absolutely fine, if a little mussed from having beaten another girl to a pulp, but her victim was lying calmly on the floor with a split lip and a blooming black eye. Her breathing was steady and even and her eyes were blankly fixed on the wall in front of her face. When the other students were asked what had happened they all gave conflicting reports, varying from the appearance of knives to a thumb wrestling match. When the security footage was played back we all watched in shock as Ciandra manhandled the girl like a rag doll. She hadn’t fought back for a moment, and even with the graininess of the film I could tell that her eyes were empty. Dead.

            Everyone started calling her Reaper after that. Sometimes it was innocuous, just using the name to refer to her. Other times it was whispered maliciously as the short girl strode calmly down the hallway to her locker or to her next class. She never looked at any of the people who taunted her.

___

            She was cold and distant and some might have even called her stupid. I wouldn’t have gone so far. I honestly thought she was one of the brightest people I had ever come across, and I had met someone who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in biology.

            I discovered her intelligence in class when I asked her to tell me something about _The Catcher in the Rye_. She had been looking out of the barred window and I had planned to finally catch her off guard so she would pay attention for the rest of class, but she explained, in great detail but few words, how Holden Caulfield metaphorically died throughout the novel, how he finally came to his end as he cried watching his sister ride the carousel. Her icy blue eyes almost sparkled with passion as she talked about the book. I had never seen her so animated. I thought that all the air had been removed from the classroom. Most of the students were speechlessly impressed, and then-

            “That bitch is crazy. This is a bullshit book about a kid with some disease that don’t exist!” exclaimed Ciandra from the back of the classroom. The students exploded in laughter and began agreeing, and Ciandra swelled in pride. Reaper sighed and looked back out of the window, her eyes fading from passionate back to dead as she stared unseeingly at the leaves caught in the gutter.

___

            She was cold and distant and some might have even called her completely unlovable. I wouldn’t have gone so far. I, for one, liked her, and she had had at least one friend at some point.

            Most of the students (read: inmates) had visitors on weekends. Reaper rarely did, and even when someone did come to see her it was usually her case worker bringing her some kind of document to sign. One day she got a real visitor. A friend, the boy had said when he came to the front desk. He had blonde hair cut to his chin and deep ocean eyes, looking so different from Reaper’s raven hair and pale skin. When the security guards brought Reaper into the meeting room (I was sitting in the observation room on the other side of a two-way mirror) the boy didn’t smile, and neither did she. They sat in utter silence for several minutes, the boy playing with his fingers and Reaper looking blankly at his bowed head.

            “He’s dead,” the boy said eventually. “He died last night.”

            Reaper didn’t respond and the boy sighed.

            “I just thought I’d tell you in person instead of having your case worker tell you. I thought you’d rather hear it from me,” he continued.

            “You didn’t need to come, Armin,” she said. “You should be with your mother right now. She needs you more than I do.”

            Armin’s eyes were soft but guarded as he sighed again. I saw him staring at the fresh bruise she was sporting under her left eye.

            “He left me your guitar in his will,” he said. Reaper scoffed.

            “Of course he did. He left you all my possessions. Former possessions.”

            “No, actually.”

            “Then he sold most of them.”

            Armin paused before reluctantly nodding.

            “Do they let you keep things here?” he asked. “I want you to have the guitar. I know how important it was to you. It was your mother’s at one point, right?”

            “I sleep in the equivalent of a cell with solid walls here, Armin. We don’t get things.”

            “What do you want me to do with the guitar, then?”

            “Whatever you want. It’s yours now.”

            “It’s not mine.”

            “Well, I’m giving it to you. Do what you want with it. Sell it. Smash it. Donate it to some guitar museum. Keep it. I don’t care.”

            The blonde boy nodded and looked back down at his hands.

            “Mom and I are the sole beneficiaries,” he said lowly. I expected the girl to flinch or sigh or close her eyes, but there was no reaction.

            “Okay,” she said, emotionless.

            “But I’m making sure that you have money. Mom and I are setting up a savings account for you so when you get out of here-“

            “Don’t bother, Armin,” Reaper interrupted. “We both know I’m not going to use it.”

            “Because you don’t want anything to do with us or because he’d roll over in his grave if he knew you were using his money?”

            “Because we both know that I’m just going to end up in jail once I’m done with this place,” she said. “Or I’ll get the chair or something. Or one of these kids is going to kill me before I get out of here.”

            “You don’t know that. You could get a little apartment somewhere and write. I know you still write. Or you could go to college.”

            “Who is going to accept me into their school? I’ve been bounced around six foster homes and now I’m in a correctional facility. Even if I did get accepted they would have the RA’s keep a constant eye on me to make sure I didn’t strangle my roommate because she ate the last of the fucking Cheerios.”

            She paused and swallowed before I heard her laugh for the first time. It wasn’t a sincere laugh; it was sarcastic and breathy and it almost sounded malicious.

            “I don’t really have much of a future, do I?” she chuckled.

            Armin sighed.

            “No,” he said, almost choking. “No, you don’t.”

___

            She was cold and distant and some might have called her ugly because of the scowl on her lips, the deadness in her eyes. I wouldn’t have gone so far. By any means. She was probably the most beautiful creature I had ever come across in my life, with black hair and high cheekbones and pale skin and rosy lips and those icy blue eyes that had lit up so brightly when she had talked about _The Catcher in the Rye_. It took nearly all of my concentration not to stare at her when she was in my English class.

            It honestly scared me how attractive she was, even though she only wore a black sweatshirt and a pair of loose black jeans. Sometimes I saw boys making bedroom eyes in her direction and hot anger would flare up in my chest. Once I caught a boy attempting to slap her ass, but I grabbed the fucker’s wrist tightly before he could make contact. I told him that he needed to show women more respect before giving him a detention. Reaper and I shared a moment of eye contact in which she nodded in thanks.

            One time there was a school dance. The school’s administrator, Erwin Smith, had said it had something to do with Rose’s test scores improving. All the teachers, wranglers, and security guards were forced to chaperone, so that meant that all the students were forced to attend. I had reluctantly put on my second-best suit and stationed myself near the food table (there were no utensils or other things that could be fashioned into weapons, so the brats had to reach into the chip bowls with their grubby hands and touch all the food at once). I scanned the crowds for Reaper.

            I eventually found her on the other end of the food table. We had another brief instance of eye contact before she looked away, gazing indifferently at the crowd of dancing students. I held back a sigh as I looked at her, her hair curling down along her shoulders and her waist accentuated by a short blue dress.

            Walking around the table I came to stand beside her, leaning against the wall and crossing my arms over my chest.

            “Shouldn’t you be out there having fun?” I asked her. She scoffed.

            “Do you think I consider gyrating with a horde of people who can’t stand me fun?”

            “I suppose not,” I said. “Well, I’m not exactly here of my own will, either.”

            “Good to know,” she said.

            The dress she wore had long sleeves, a square neck, a fitted waist with a black sash, and a flared skirt that ended about two inches above her knees. Her shoes were the ratty black converse that she wore on a day-to-day basis.

            “What are you laughing at?” she asked. I must have chuckled.

            “Your shoes,” I answered honestly.

            She looked down at her feet before lifting her gaze back to the dance floor.

            “They’re comfortable,” she said. “And they’re the only ones I own.”

            I hummed and looked out at the dancing brats. They were moving to some obnoxious, loud, and obnoxiously loud rap song with misogynistic lyrics. The sounds of loud conversations and louder laughter rang out over the music. I noticed that Reaper’s fingers were drumming out the beat on her opposite arm. She stiffened.

            “Ciandra’s about to get in a fight,” she said nodding towards the girl. I followed her gaze and, surely enough, she was right. The girl was standing menacingly over another, more frightened student. “Should you go break it up or should I?”

            “You want to break it up?”

            She scoffed.

            “As strange as it might sound, I don’t necessarily enjoy seeing people in pain.”

            The world stopped turning for a moment. I didn’t have much time for an epiphany considering the fact that I needed to break up a fight, so I let it wash over me as I stepped out onto the dance floor on my way to Ciandra. I wove in between two grinding couples and remembered how she had never fought back in any of her fights in the school hallways, stepped around a puddle of spilled punch and recalled how _The Catcher in the Rye_ had made her dead eyes light up, approached the bully and replayed how she had been so quick to turn down assistance from her blonde friend, restrained Ciandra’s raised fist and realized that Reaper didn’t belong in Rose or any other correctional facility. Where she really belonged I had no idea.

            Ciandra gave me the nastiest glare she could manage.

            “He told me he’d rape me if I ever wore this dress again,” she snarled. I turned to the student in question.

            “Is that true?” I asked evenly.

            “It’s so tight! She’s obviously asking for it,” he said, trying to defend himself.

            “No one asks for it, young man,” I said. “You have detention.”

            He looked shocked, his mouth slack.

            “But she was about to hit me!”

            “Don’t worry. She has detention, as well. Perhaps you two can work out your differences while scrubbing floors.”

            They scowled at me but nodded before disappearing into the crowd, each going in a separate direction.

            The world had stopped spinning for those few minutes, but everybody knows that if something pauses it has to race to catch up. I could almost see the trails of color the students left as they sped in all directions, like I was watching a movie on fast forward. Once the world caught up to its normal place I was standing in an empty pocket of air in the middle of the dance floor and willing my head to stop racing. The clock struck midnight to signal the end of the dance, and, just like Cinderella, Reaper was gone when I looked at the end of the food table.

___

            She was cold and distant and some might have called her dull. I wouldn’t have gone so far. When we were alone together she was animated and witty and sarcastic and generally enjoyable to be around.

            She started coming in to after school tutoring after the dance. Rose had a policy that teachers had to remain in their classrooms for at least an hour after school each day to allow struggling students to come in for help. This service was very rarely utilized, with most students going directly to the courtyard to play basketball or to the den to watch television or back to their dorms to do their homework. That left me with an extra hour that I had to spend at that godforsaken school, but it wasn’t remotely unenjoyable once Reaper began spending tutoring hours with me.

            We talked about books a lot. She loved books. I had heard her little blonde friend say that she wrote when he came to visit her, but she elaborated by saying that she wrote fiction. Her dream was to become a famous author whose novels could be used in assigned readings for schools. She wanted to make English classes enjoyable for kids who didn’t particularly like books like _Walden_ or _The Catcher in the Rye_. She told me about her stories and it was almost impossible for me to keep myself from staring at her eyes. They were animated and alive when she talked about her stories. I fleetingly thought that, perhaps, her stories were all that kept her alive some days.

            We swapped stories. I told her about my time in college with my friends Hanji – the one who would go on to win a Nobel Prize – and Mike and Petra and Erd and Oluo and Gunther and even Erwin, who had been two years ahead of me. I told her about egging Gunther’s cheating girlfriend’s car and never getting caught because egg had somehow gotten into the security camera and ruined the tapes. I told her about getting Erwin so drunk that he had started stripping in the bar and we had had to drag him out before he embarrassed himself too much. I told her about living with Hanji and how they had been the bane of my existence and the light of my life for the two years we had shared that shitty apartment. I told her about one of my professors giving me an F on a term paper only to turn it into an A and tell me that he just wanted me to feel true fear for a day. In turn Reaper told me little vignettes from her early childhood with her mother and from the escapades she and Armin, whom I soon learned was actually her stepbrother, had gotten up to before her father and his mother had gotten married. She never told me anything about her family or other friends, so I never asked.

            We also talked about movies and television and theater. It turned out that she was just as good at analyzing visual media as she was at analyzing texts, and I was fascinated by her ideas and observations. I told her that I had briefly worked as a script writer for a late night talk show, but when the pilot was never picked up I quit the business. She asked to see the script. When I dug it up and showed it to her the next day she marveled at it, picking out the little details that I had worked so hard to include. She told me that she had written a script for a play and I wryly said that she owed me, so she brought it to me the day after that. I read it that night and immediately called up one of my old show business contacts, Darius Zackley, and told him that one of my students was a fucking creative genius. When I told Reaper what I had done her pretty eyes lit up again and she practically bounced in her seat.

            I quickly noticed that her eyes didn’t look so dead anymore. When I saw her pass my classroom during the day she often had a small secret smile on her lips, and I thought that perhaps my little stunt with Zackley had given her hope of a future outside of Rose. I felt myself swell with pride – pride in myself for bringing her hope and pride in her for finding a reason to smile.

            It was three months after she started coming into my tutoring sessions that I realized I was attracted to her, and two months after that that I realized I might be in love with her wit and her smile and her laugh and her passion and her pretty eyes that sparkled like they were lit by a cluster of fairy lights.

___

            She was cold and distant and some might have called her cruel.

            One day she didn’t show up for classes. I was worried. She had a perfect attendance record. After classes were over I went to check on her in the infirmary, but she wasn’t there. I tried knocking on her dorm room door but there was no answer or noise from within. I checked with the administration and they told me she had somehow gotten out of the facility the previous night. They had reported her missing but no reports had come in.

            This went on for four days. Each day I became more and more worried, even agitated enough to lash out at Erwin during a faculty meeting. I had inhaled and apologized, but he knew something was wrong. I thanked a deity I wasn’t sure if I believed in that he never brought up my little outburst again or even asked me what was going on. I was sure he knew. He was like my mother, catching me at everything.

            Upon investigating Reaper’s abandoned dorm room the police discovered that the security camera had been disabled and that the window’s hinges had been unscrewed until the impenetrable glass panes had fallen off. They also found a loose floorboard under which were Philip’s head screwdriver, a half-empty box of bullets, and a rag with trace amounts of polishing oil. My heart dropped into my stomach and might as well have fallen right out of my ass.

            I didn’t live very far from Rose, so I walked to and from work every day. On the fifth day of Reaper’s disappearance I stayed after school for several hours, sitting outside on a bench and staring at a pack of cigarettes in my hand. I contemplated smoking them even though I had dropped the habit years earlier due to my uncle’s death from lung cancer. I also contemplated going and getting a package of nicotine patches and sticking them all over my body so I could get the relaxation that came with cigarettes, but I couldn’t quite will myself to move. Once I was done feeling simultaneously numb and sorry for myself – that was I lie because I never stopped feeling that way – it was pitch black. I pushed on my knees to stand up, slipping the cigarettes into my pocket and slinging the strap of my leather briefcase over my shoulder before starting my walk home.

            I didn’t make it very far. There was a river that ran through a park by the school, and the moon and a yellow-glowing security lamppost lit up the dips and peaks of the water like snow on mountaintops. I was about to walk over the bridge that crossed the river when I noticed a figure sitting on a bench at the waterfront. The figure wore loose black clothes and ratty black sneakers, had dark hair pulled into a ponytail and something in its lap that gleamed in the light of the lamppost.

            Reaper.

            I inhaled deeply before walking slowly over to the bench where she sat, planting myself on the opposite side. She glanced over at me and instantly relaxed.

            “Hi,” she said to her lap. I noticed that the gleaming object was an impeccably polished gun.

            “Hi,” I returned. “Where have you been?”

            “Around,” she said. “I’ve been trying to work up the courage to go see Armin, but every time I get to the estate I chicken out.”

            “Estate?”

            “My father was a very rich man and had what is basically a mansion. Armin and his mother live there now.”

            “Was?”

            “My father’s dead. He died a few months ago. I don’t know how. I almost hope that someone came in and smothered him to death.”

            I hummed and looked out at the water.

            “What’s the gun for?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

            “Well I wasn’t planning to run into anyone else tonight if that gives you a clue.”

            I sighed. She spoke again.

            “If you’re here to convince me not to do it-“

            “I’m not,” I said, surprised to find that I meant it. “This is a very important decision and only you can make it. I don’t have any say in the matter.”

            “So you wouldn’t mind if I…”

            “I never said that,” I said quickly. Probably too quickly. “I’d absolutely love it if you would throw that thing into the water and forget about this whole suicide business, but that’s not my decision to make.”

            She nodded and swallowed.

            “What brought this on?” I asked.

            She swallowed again.

            “My mom’s dead,” she said simply.

            “So you’re going to kill yourself?”

            “That’s not it, asshole,” she snapped. She regained control by taking several deep breaths and staring out at the river. The current made little craggy waves in the black water, their peaks white with yellow light.

            “Then what else is there?” I asked.

            “That Zackley guy you called…” she trailed. “He got in contact with me.”

            I was about to tell her that that was great news, that I was happy for her, but then I realized that she wouldn’t be contemplating suicide if he had called with good news.

            “Go on.”

            “He told me that my writing was wonderful but… he didn’t want to be associated with someone from a penitentiary. He told me that nobody in their right minds was going to work with a child delinquent.”

            “That’s just one asshole’s opinion,” I said. She shook her head.

            “I’ve sent my stories to various publishers and my scripts to various studios and they’ve all said the exact same thing – I’m a wonderful writer but they don’t want to taint themselves by working with me.”

            She looked down at the gun in her lap and ran a fingertip around the muzzle.

            “I’ve applied to several universities – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, SMU, Rice, USC, Vanderbilt, MIT, even community colleges – and they’ve all basically told me that they’d accept me in a heartbeat if I wasn’t coming from a correctional facility. I’ve even looked for jobs for when I graduate next month but none of the ones I’d be good at want someone with a history of violence.”

            For the second time in my life I heard her make that breathy, insincere, malicious laugh.

            “I’m going to end up on welfare or in prison and none of this would have happened if I’d just not…”

            She cut herself off with an inhale.

            “There’s always McDonald’s,” I offered weakly, even though I knew that wasn’t what she needed to hear. She laughed that horrible laugh again.

            “Do you even know me? I couldn’t work in the food service industry,” she said. Then she added lowly, “They were one of the ones who rejected me.”

            I exhaled slowly, running different scenarios through my head. What would be the best way to get her to safety? What could I do to help her? What could I say to make her put down the gun? Should I just grab the weapon and sling it into the water?

            “You said that your parents died recently. Why were you in foster care if they were both alive?” I asked.

            She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes.

            “If you want to whole story it’s going to take a while,” she said.

            “I’ve got time,” I responded. It was the truth.

            She sighed.

            “I’m illegitimate,” she began. “As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well with my father’s business partners, so he tried to keep me out of the media and made me live with my mom. When my mother got sick I had to go live with my father in his mansion, where his girlfriend and her son, Armin, lived with him. I could tell right away that he preferred Armin over me. A lot of times he would tell people that he was his son and that I was Armin’s friend. That, for obvious reasons, pissed me right the fuck off.”

            I held back a chuckle. She was funny even with a gun on her lap.

            “It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I really realized what was going to happen to me. When my father and Armin’s mother got married I knew that I was going to be disowned. He had a new son to pass on the company to. He wouldn’t need me anymore,” she said. “So I started making out with girls from school.”

            “You’re-“

            “Bi,” she said. “And my father was a huge homophobe. I mostly just did it to piss him off. When I was fifteen he stopped looking at me, stopped introducing me as his daughter. I knew for sure that he was going to disown me, so I sent him a video of me kissing another girl, just to get it over with. He kicked me out of the house that night. I have this really vibrant memory of Armin trying to protest but his mother clamping her hand over his mouth.”

            “And you couldn’t have gone to live with your mother?” I asked.

            “She was in hospice care at that point. Ovarian cancer. I went to a fire station and told them that my father was abandoning me, so they got me into state custody. The rest is history.”

            We sat in silence for a few moments.

            “How old are you now?” I asked.

            “Eighteen,” she said.

            “You could come live with me once you’re out of school. I’ve got a two-bedroom apartment pretty close by.”

            She shook her head.

            “I can’t do that to you,” she said. “There’s no way I could do that to you.”

            “I wouldn’t mind, and it’s not like the water bill would go up exponentially.”

            “You underestimate my abilities.”

            That time I did chuckle.

            “I wouldn’t be able to contribute to the rent,” she said.

            “It doesn’t m-“

            “It _does_ matter. To me. I get sick thinking about depending on anyone.”

            She looked back down at the gun in her lap.

            “I don’t have a future,” she said tensely.

            “That’s not true,” I said, probably a bit too vehemently.

            “What do I have a future in, Mr. Ackerman?”

            “Call me Levi,” I said quickly. She hesitated.

            “What’s my future, Levi?” she asked quietly.

            _It’s with me. We could get a little house in the suburbs and raise a family and I could take care of you_.

            “I don’t know,” I said instead.

            “Then how can you be so sure that I have one?”

            “If you’re alive then you have a future. I can’t tell you what it will hold, but I can tell you that you’ll have one. You just have to stay alive.”

            She smiled sadly at her lap.

            “I don’t think I can make that promise,” she said.

            She had made her choice. I inhaled deeply and groped wildly for her hand. I laced our fingers together and squeezed, trying to savor these moments and praying that she would change her mind at the last minute.

            “I love you, you know,” I said, purely by accident. I wasn’t sure what I had been meaning to say, but that was what came out when my lips parted.

            She laughed again, and it wasn’t malicious this time.

            “I know,” she said.

            I scooted down the bench until I could press my shaking body against hers, resting my chin atop the crown of her head. She sighed contentedly and nuzzled farther into my embrace.

            “Every day could be like this,” I said. “We could do this every day.”

            “I know.”

            She pulled away and I squeezed her hand harder.

            “Would you mind if I kissed you?” she asked. “I’ve been wondering what it would feel like for about four months now.”

            I didn’t answer. Instead I ducked my head and kissed her, cupping her cheek with the hand that wasn’t tangled up in hers. I tilted my head and deepened it and she groaned and fisted her hand in my hair and I could have mistaken the way my heart soared for happiness if it hadn’t been for the way I was struggling not to break down and cry.

            She was the one to pull back. I would have gone on kissing her until morning came if it meant she would stay with me. She smiled brightly at me, trying to make me feel better.

            “Do you believe in an afterlife?” she asked.

            “No,” I said honestly. She chuckled.

            “Neither do I,” she said.

            She looked down at the gun.

            “I’m going to need my hand back,” she said.

            “I can hold the other one.”

            She nodded and I wasn’t sure if we were holding hands for her or for me. I untangled our fingers before reaching across her lap and grabbing her opposite hand. She picked up the weapon from her lap, staring at it as if she was in awe of how it fit in her hand. She gingerly flicked off the safety and placed her finger on the trigger.

            “I love you, too,” she said as she placed the muzzle against her temple.

            We squeezed at the same time. I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed the trigger.

            I didn’t let go of her cold hand as I made the 911 call, the gunshot still ringing in my ears. I didn’t let go when I heard the ambulance sirens approaching. I only let go when the paramedics forcefully pried my fingers away from hers. When my hands were free and she was in a plastic bag I dug into my pocket for the cigarettes. I lit one and brought it to my mouth, taking a long drag.

            She was cold and distant in ways I hadn’t imagined she could be, her skin turning to ice and soul far away. Some would have called her cruel. And I agreed. As I sat on the park bench, dully answering any questions the police had and taking deep puffs off my cigarette, I couldn’t help but think that Zoralee “Reaper” Durmango was incredibly, unequivocally cruel.

___

            I died three years later. Lung cancer, ironically enough. I never did stop smoking.

            I closed my eyes in a hospital bed and opened them in a darkened park, the moon and a security lamppost lighting up the river water like carnival lights. Instead of a paper hospital gown I wore a dress shirt and a pair of slacks. Two people sat on a bench by the riverbank, a man and a woman. I could only see their backs from where I stood, but I had replayed this scene in my mind enough to know what I was seeing.

            “You shouldn’t be here,” someone said. I hadn’t heard that voice in three years.

            I looked to my side to see Reaper. She wore basically the same things as I did, though her shirt and slacks were a bit more slender. She was staring at the couple on the park bench with wistful eyes.

            “Why not?” I asked.

            “It’s too early for you to be here. They could’ve cured you if you’d just accepted the damn chemo.”

            I shrugged.

            “Life isn’t for everyone. You should know that better than almost anyone.”

            It was her turn to shrug. She stuck her hands in her pockets.

            “How long does this scene last?” I asked her.

            “This part lasts until I pull the trigger. Then the point of view changes and I’m looking down on the scene. You call 911 and pull out a cigarette and then it’s over.”

            “How many times have you watched this?”

            “I’ve been watching it on repeat for three years.”

            I swallowed.

            “That’s a long time.”

            “I guess.”

            I heard a gunshot and suddenly we were hovering over the scene, looking down as I pulled out my phone and made a calm phone call.

            “Is this Heaven or Hell?” I asked.

            “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “The only way to find out is to leave this scene.”

            “How do you do that?”

            She gestured to a door that floated behind me.

            “That’s the only way out, I think. When I got here a voice told me that beyond that door is my fate, and the only way to find out if it was Heaven or Hell is to walk through it.”

            “Why haven’t you left? It’s been three years.”

            “I’ve been waiting for you.”

            I pushed back tears.

            “How long would you have waited?” I asked.

            “As long as it took,” she said immediately, like it was obvious.

            The scene went dark before starting up again. The living Reaper was sitting on the park bench and I was approaching her from the bridge.

            “If you’ve been watching this over and over again for three years how did you know I was sick?” I asked.

            “The voice told me. It told me you were being stupid and refusing treatment, too.” She sighed. “You could have had a really good life, you know. Could have settled down with a nice girl – or guy. I’m not judging. Could have had a little family.”

            “I wanted to.”

            “Why didn’t you?”

            “Every time I so much as thought about having romantic feelings towards someone I felt sick, like something was wrong. The only person I wanted to settle down with was you.”

            She nodded.

            “Do you regret your decision?” I asked.

            “Sometimes,” she sighed. “Sometimes I wish I would’ve taken you up on your offer and lived with you. But most of the time I’m relieved that I did it.”

            Our counterparts were still talking on the park bench.

            “I never stopped loving you, you know. Even if what you did was selfish and cruel.”

            “Fuck you, too,” she said. I chuckled.

            She grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together like I had on her last night. I turned and pulled her to me and pressed my lips to hers, almost breaking down when I felt that pliant mouth open up for me. I had missed her with my whole being.

            “I think I’m ready to find out what’s behind that door if you are,” she said when I pulled away, resting my forehead against hers. I nodded.

            “I can’t watch this for much longer,” I admitted.

            “Neither can I.”

            She tightened her grip on my hand and turned around, leading me towards the door. When we were directly in front of it she grabbed the knob. I placed my hand over hers.

            “Ready?” I asked.

            “For whatever’s on the other side,” she said, reaching up to peck me on the cheek. I felt my heart soar for the first time in three years.

            We turned the knob together and pushed in the door, stepping over the threshold and into eternity.


End file.
